Reality check
FreeCons challenge bad ideas because we want conservatism to prevail
Freedom Conservatives seek to preserve America’s founding principles of liberty, federalism, civic virtue, and the rule of law — and to apply them creatively to modern-day challenges and opportunities.
For FreeCons and our allies, the second half of that proposition matters just as much as the first. We do champion ideas. Some FreeCons have spent decades teaching America’s founding principles in classrooms, explaining them in articles and books, or defending them in courtrooms across the country.
But for us, principles are more than just abstractions. They represent a practical guide for policymaking. Many FreeCons have direct experience in the field. Some have held elective office in Washington, state capitals, or local governments. Others have worked closely with policymakers as political appointees, government staffers, or external advisors.
We want conservatives to win elections — and to stay in office by governing effectively. That’s why Freedom Conservatives do what we do.
That’s why we cheer on and assist leaders when they pursue good policies. That’s also why we warn conservative politicians not to embrace the unwise policies advocated by the nationalist-populist Right. This isn’t about dogmatic orthodoxy or institutional turf. It’s about real-world consequences.
In just the past week, prominent FreeCons have repeatedly urged Republicans in Washington to abandon policies with potentially disastrous effects. In the Wall Street Journal, for example, Donald Boudreaux and his coauthor, former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, pointed to “the massive uncertainty that the Trump administration’s trade policy has created as it wreaked havoc on supply chains and global commerce.”
Also in the Journal, FreeCon signatories Brian Blase and Paul Winfree argued that GOP leaders on Capitol Hill must combat waste, fraud, and runaway spending in Medicaid, while FreeCon signatory Karl Rove advised President Trump to focus on lowering consumer prices and not “stir up needless controversy” by such stunts as “tweeting a picture of himself as the pope.”
And at RealClearMarkets, Winfree observed that federal policymakers are running out of time to get Washington’s fiscal house in order.
“We know there is a fiscal limit beyond which the old trick of ‘waiting until tomorrow to cut spending’ won’t work anymore,” wrote Winfree, president of the Economic Policy Innovation Center and a former budget official on Capitol Hill and in the first Trump White House.
Winfree’s research places that red line for the United States at around 150% of GDP.
“Sound distant? Consider that publicly held debt is already approaching 100%. At the pace projected by the Congressional Budget Office, we will begin to permanently erode fiscal space by 2029, exhausting it completely by the early-2050s.”
Today, we feature other FreeCons who critique the decisions of conservative policymakers not because we want them to fail but because we want them to succeed.
Look before leaping
Ethan Yang is executive director of the Mark Twain Center for The Study of Human Freedom at Trinity College and a FreeCon signatory.
Yang also serves as an adjunct research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, where he hosts the “Authors Corner” podcast.
In a recent article for the Independent Institute, he argued that the U.S. Department of Justice is committing a grave error by trying to break up Google by judicial fiat.
“Antitrust intervention, particularly in vertical restraint cases such as the matter of Google Search, is best done after extensive economic research and when a market is thoroughly understood,” Yang wrote.
“Otherwise, the government is just breaking apart and interfering with business conduct that it does not understand.”
After describing legal precedent and the realities of consumer markets for online search and artificial intelligence, Yang predicted that forcibly breaking up Google “will likely decrease, not increase, competition and degrade the welfare of consumers.”
Google would be “deprived of the resources it worked hard to obtain while also being less incentivized to improve its products, since its competitors will be able to free-ride off the company’s efforts,” he concluded.
And “Google’s rivals will feel less pressure to improve and innovate and consumers will ultimately lose in the end.”
Risky revocation
James R. Copland is director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute and a FreeCon signatory.
A frequent contributor to national media outlets, Copland is the author of The Unelected: How an Unaccountable Elite is Governing America.
In a recent City Journal column, he argued that the Trump administration is entirely justified in pressing Harvard University to end its longtime use of racial preferences — but that attempting to revoke its tax-exempt status “carries major risks extending well beyond academia into the broader nonprofit sector.”
Copland reminded readers that during the Obama administration, IRS officials held up approvals for hundreds of nonprofit groups, including Tea Party-affiliated organizations hostile to the president’s agenda, in the run-up to the 2012 election.
“Do conservatives, then, really want to expand the level of discretion given to tax bureaucrats answerable to the president?” he asked. “Do they want to allow an amorphous concept like ‘eradicating racial discrimination’ to be used by Republican administrations to yank tax-exempt status from groups that support Palestine — or by Democratic administrations to do so for those supporting Israel?”
“I think not. And I don’t think the Supreme Court wants to be the ‘tax exemption arbiter,’ either.”
Time to change course
Matt Wylie is president of Freedom Project USA, which advocates, involves, and educates lawmakers, job creators, and the public about free-market principles. A columnist for the McClatchy newspaper chain, he’s also a FreeCon signatory.
A former executive director of the Massachusetts Republican Party, Wylie spent 25 years managing political campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels, including U.S. Senate campaigns in Connecticut, Georgia, and Alaska.
In a recent newspaper column, he argued that the Trump administration has gotten off to a rocky start, thanks to the president’s disastrous tariff policies and legal shortcuts.
“Of course there have been some successes,” Wylie wrote. “But so far, Republicans have squandered this historic opportunity to show America what real conservative leadership looks like — limited government, free markets, fiscal responsibility and a steadfast defense of individual liberties.”
Still, the story is far from over. “There’s still time to change course, and history has a way of surprising us.”
In the mix
• At the Center Square, FreeCon signatory Iain Murray answered a common question: if protectionist tariffs are so bad, why do so many countries have them?
The answer reflects “an old story, found time and time again in politics,” wrote Murray, vice president for strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and his coauthor Ryan Young. “Government gives out blatant favors to a favored few and ignores costs dispersed among the many. Economists call this concentrated benefits and diffused costs.”
“Adding to the problem is a quirk of human nature: many people feel wary or hostile to foreigners. We want to help ‘our’ industry against ‘theirs,’ as if they were rival sports teams.”
• In the Washington Examiner, FreeCon signatory Jessica Melugin predicted that the Federal Trade Commission will have a hard time winning its antitrust case against Meta.
Under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the FTC has tried to prove that Meta’s purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp has harmed consumers. “Both apps are free to users, have experienced product improvements, and are very popular,” wrote Melugin, director of CEI’s Center for Technology & Innovation.
It was widely seen as a weak case when filed five years ago, and “a rapidly changing tech landscape may make for an even steeper climb to victory” today, she observed.